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Sahil Kapur

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Sahil Kapur is TPM's senior congressional reporter and Supreme Court correspondent. His articles have been published in the Huffington Post, The Guardian and The New Republic. Email him at sahil@talkingpointsmemo.com and follow him on Twitter at @sahilkapur.

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Sahil

Republicans are struggling to find a way to prevent an unnecessary shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security in one month.

The party faces a familiar dilemma: spark a crisis or infuriate its conservative base, which is demanding that Congress use the power of the purse to block President Barack Obama's executive actions on immigration.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) asked Attorney General nominee Loretta Lynch to explain Wednesday at her confirmation hearing why polygamy wouldn't also become a constitutional right if if the Supreme Court decided that same-sex marriage was protected by the Constitution.

Americans want Congress to fix a potential Obamacare gap by a remarkable 64-27 percent margin if the Supreme Court invalidates subsidies in three dozen states, according to a new poll released Wednesday.

House Speaker John Boehner is eying another lawsuit against President Barack Obama — this time against his executive actions to protect nearly 5 million undocumented immigrants from the threat of deportation.

Democrats are giving Senate Republicans a taste of their own medicine.

The new minority is pulling out all the stops to stymie Sen. Mitch McConnell's first bill as majority leader — legislation to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, which faces a veto threat from President Barack Obama.

And in a possible sign of trouble to come for the Kentucky Republican, Democrats are having some success — even though plenty of their own members support the pipeline. A vote to end debate on the legislation failed on Monday afternoon, 53-39, falling short of the 60 votes required to defeat a filibuster.

It's undisputed that virtuallyeveryone had — for years — construed the Affordable Care Act to allow subsidies for Americans even if their state didn't set up an insurance exchange. But the Justice Department wants it to be clear that "everyone" includes the four conservative justices on the Supreme Court who voted to wipe out Obamacare in 2012 and will now hear a new challenge to the law.

In the government's brief defending the ACA, filed with the Supreme Court on Wednesday, DOJ returns on three occasions to the language of the joint dissent of the conservative justices in NFIB v. Sebelius. Justice Antonin Scalia was the de facto leader of the conservatives in that case, who nearly derailed Obamacare until Chief Justice John Roberts, much to the ire of his fellow legal conservatives, joined with the Court's liberal justices to mostly save President Barack Obama's signature legislative achievement.

With Obamacare under the legal gun yet again, the government is using the words of the dissenting justices to suggest they themselves interpreted the statute then as the White House does now when it comes to the core question in the new case, King v. Burwell: Does the ACA allow subsidies on the federal exchange?

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) was released from the hospital in Washington on Monday afternoon after successful surgery to remove a blood clot in his right eye, his office said.

His spokesman Adam Jentleson said the senator was resting at home and in good spirits, "cracking jokes" with his wife. He added, "Doctors have said they are optimistic about his prospects for regaining vision in his right eye but there is no definitive verdict yet."

The U.S. budget deficit for the current fiscal year is estimated to fall to its lowest level during President Barack Obama's presidency.

In a new budget and economic outlook released Monday, the Congressional Budget Office projected that the deficit for fiscal year 2015 would come in at $468 billion, down from $483 billion in fiscal year 2014.